Submitted for her approval: Danielle Smith's new jab at Trudeau hits cities, universities too
CBC
Earlier this week, the Danielle Smith government performed its latest round of celebrating "red tape reduction." It pledged to streamline and slash bureaucratic burdens for rural utilities, cannabis vendors and autonomous-vehicle innovators.
Two days later, what happened?
The premier announced legislation declaring that next year any municipality, school or agency that wanted any dollar or any deal with Ottawa would first need provincial civil servants to review, deliberate and give Alberta's seal of approval.
Based on the new legislation, that covers an Alberta town arranging new Canada Post mailbox sites, or Red Deer's next sponsored Canada Day celebrations, or a school board wishing to continue a funding program for Indigenous students with disabilities. The list of examples could stretch far longer.
It covers not only any new deal between any one of these provincial entities and any federal agency, but any extended or renewed agreement would need Alberta's fortis et liber stamp too.
Existing deals for projects — like affordable housing, wastewater or cycling trail rehabilitation — would be fine, although Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver added a caveat that might send chills into the souls of the province's mayors.
"Unless they have terms that can't be lived with," he cautioned.
The prospect of Smith's government as go-between had already gotten municipal leaders fuming in advance, and may ensnare university and college presidents too, now that it's clear the bill will also require post-secondary schools to get provincial OK for federal research grants as well.
Smith professes she doesn't intend to create more red tape for agencies — after all, in her mind, red tape's bad and her government's policy aims are good. It's all in the name of sticking it to the guy she routinely sticks it to.
"In Alberta today, we are taking back more of our jurisdictional control and telling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet that they cannot make deals without our express approval."
She's no longer the only Canadian premier in this mood.
Others, like Ontario Premier Doug Ford — a routine Trudeau ally, although Conservative — have become increasingly irked by the Ottawa Liberals' announcements that tread on the provinces' jurisdictional turf. Trudeau's recent pre-budget tour has been full of them: school lunch programs, housing funding tied to local zoning reform, and before that child care, pharmacare and dental care — all the constitutional domain of the provinces.
Municipalities are provincial jurisdiction, too, as much as mayors will protest this week and always that they shouldn't be treated like a premier's children.
However, Alberta is the first to act on this frustration, mimicking a 40-year-old Quebec law allowing the government to nullify any deals between Ottawa and provincial entities that provincial cabinets haven't signed off on. It was enacted in 1984 under the Parti Québécois, a party with a different flavour of sovereignism than Smith's UCP.
While his party has made a cause célèbre out of its battle with the Speaker, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has periodically waxed poetic about the House of Commons — suggesting that its green upholstery is meant to symbolize the fields of the English countryside where commoners met centuries ago before the signing of the Magna Carta.